


What is a Legacy?

by Sky_King



Category: Dr. STONE (Anime), Dr. STONE (Manga)
Genre: Acceptance, Also Kissing, Character Study, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Existential Angst, Existential Crisis, Gen comforts Senku, Hurt/Comfort, I also ship other things i swear, I'm salty over Chrome's accusation that Senku "doesn't have permission to die", M/M, Mentions of Near Death Experiences, Mortality, Senku gets deep, Senku ponders on his own mortality, Taking Risks, What do you fear more than death?, What does it mean for humanity?, What remains after death?, legacy, that's it that's the entire fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-15
Updated: 2019-11-15
Packaged: 2021-01-31 03:47:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21439699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sky_King/pseuds/Sky_King
Summary: Senku is forced to face his own mortality. But if Gen has anything to say about it, he doesn't have to do it by himself.He's never been alone.
Relationships: Asagiri Gen/Ishigami Senkuu
Comments: 18
Kudos: 315





	What is a Legacy?

**Author's Note:**

> The tags said it all, I guess.
> 
> I understand the sentiment behind Chrome and Kohaku not wanting to give them "permission to die", but that's not what this is all about.
> 
> Both Ruri and Senku had had to continue bearing the responsibility on their own, with a sentence hanging over their heads and I think that's not fair on either of them.  
OH ALSO  
The line "what can death do beside kill me" is from W. N. P. Barbellion's Journal of a Disappointed Man.
> 
> And well, I went wild with my own ideas.
> 
> Enjoy? Can I even say that?

So much has happened, Senkuu thinks to himself as he looks out the window of the Village Chief’s hut. His hut now, apparently.

Ruri’s also supposed to be here, but Senkuu would have to have been blind, deaf and dumb not to realize she sorely wanted to get back the years lost to sickness. So he had claimed his right as Chief and recent divorcee and kicked her out.

Ruri had looked shocked for all of five seconds, before a grin had split her face, pulling him in for a hug before running off with a bag on her back to find Chrome. Senkuu wonders when he became so easy to read.

A smile softens his expression for a brief moment. She looked so much better now, it had all been worth it.

The smile falls, a hand reaches up to clutch at his chest.

Sitting by the window, their near deadly trip to the Sulfur Lake is nothing but a distant memory- a haunting one at that.

It had been worth it.

But the risk had been too high.

(When the future of humankind sits on his shoulders, the risk is always too high.)

He can’t afford to be this reckless.

But at the same time, he can’t afford not to risk his own neck out– to take what he needs, what they need by any means necessary.

He forces a smile on his lips, for his public of one. He laughs once, twice, laughs in the fear of the forgotten.

He laughs in the face of failed potential.

“What am I doing?” Senku whispers to himself, a hand on his forehead. “I’m just a high schooler in over my head.”

But no.

He also can’t afford to be such.

_Humanity can’t afford him to._

And it cannot afford to lose the knowledge inside his brain, due to some reckless action of his still developing brain.

(Of his reckless heart, and his vibrant emotions.)

He knows what he needs to do.

* * *

Chrome is, as always, hovering curiously over his shoulder, as Kaseki presents to Senkuu a thick wad of uneven blank pages, bound together by string and enveloped in large leaves.

An imaginary weight settles on his hands, even as he teases Kaseki on the unevenness of his first ever pages. The old man grumbles, his handcrafting soul suffering for the lousy job he knows he’s done, but for Senkuu this is enough.

For now.

“What do you need so many of these for?” Chrome asks, his inquisitive soul always making something soften in his heart. Loosening some of that terrible weight looming over his shoulders.

“These?” Senkuu bats the papers with a hand, gestures dismissive. “Just a little project of mine. I want to record what I’ve seen so far in this Stone World.”

His lips downturn briefly, a sour taste in his mouth. He felt just a little guilty of lying to his most ardent student.

(If something were to happen to him, he would be…)

_I’m not going to give you permission to die-!_

Senkuu closes his eyes, as he’s buffeted by the memory. A memory from not long ago, where Senkuu had wanted to entrust humanity’s legacy to someone else, and he’d been met by innocent denial.

Naïve.

Too wishful, and so naïve.

He wants to protect that innocence as much as possible, and also he _can’t _afford to be hindered by it.

(He recovers and soon ushers Chrome back to Ruri with a smile and a well-intentioned joke, missing somehow shrewd eyes trained on his every gesture. The way lips thinned into a grim line, a frown marring porcelain-like features.)

* * *

Senkuu ends up wasting a lot of precious pages– and suddenly he’s extra thankful for accepting the first batch without batting an eye.

They lay strewn across his desk, covered in tiny cramped handwriting, smudged with ink, torn where the pen dragged too hard– like his emotions overflowing, spilling out of his chest.

He holds his head, arms propped on his knees, his mind as much as a jumble as the scratched out, bleeding pages above.

This wasn’t good enough.

He wasn’t getting anywhere. He kept getting sidetracked, jumping from subject to subject as if his time was running out.

But he doesn’t know that.

Maybe his time _is _running out. Maybe each word he leaves is closer and closer to his last. Maybe he’ll die tomorrow, and there’s barely a couple people who can read and interpret his writing.

Tomorrow’s a gamble, not a promise.

But what he’s gambling is the future of humanity. He can’t afford to…

He forces his lungs to exhale.

Nothing good will come out of spiraling.

His mortality had not changed, just his view on it.

He had already come face-to-face with Death, and he was overly aware of how close she lurked.

A wrong movement, a slip.

And it all ends.

Like a candle blowing out.

(Inevitable)

(No warning, no salvation.)

Senkuu forces himself to his feet, forces himself to move back to his desk, shoves the torn pages aside and begins again.

The pen glides over the rustic paper without breaking it this time. Trial and error had taught him how to do it.

He sets to work.

Tomorrow’s a gamble, so he will milk every second of today.

* * *

The counting gets worse.

Ever since getting petrified, there’s always a part of his mind that hasn’t stopped counting. Normally he can tune it out, but other times it’s just too hard.

The numbers haunt his nightmares, as he keeps track of every single second of his life that’s passing by while he sleeps.

As the numbers go from 28,800 seconds to 21,600, to 18,000 to the dot, the seconds go on and on, as much a relentless mistress as Life.

He wakes up in the mornings, gets on his feet and drags himself to the desk, writing, writing, writing, restless, incessant.

Filling pages upon pages of all his knowledge, his memories, his hopes.

Humanity’s hope.

Their legacy.

Every page that he filled made something inside of him relax. Every feather-light paper that came away heavy with ink, seemed to take away entire tonnes off his chest.

He files them away, keeps them secure inside his hut, until he’s ready to let them be read. Ready to face the consequences of his decisions. To face them, their demands, their outrage.

Of Chrome, of Kohaku.

He understood the sentiment, don’t get him wrong. He found it endearing, and kind, and lovely, and…

_Fucking unfair._

Humanity, science, civilization…

All of this was so much greater than any of them.

(And even if it wasn’t about it… Even if it was just Senku’s legacy that would be lost, it physically hurts him to know that if Chrome refuses to bear it… If Senkuu so much as slips, it dies with him.)

So he keeps writing, even if he knows Chrome will despise him for it.

He keeps writing and tries to convince himself that they will understand.

* * *

He keeps going back to his hut at every chance he got, and writes and writes everything he knows. Making plans, making sure they would carry on, even if-when- he’s gone.

And then one late evening, as Senkuu’s returning home, a nightshade appears on his doorstep.

“Ah, Senkuu-chan, hello! How do you do?” Asagiri Gen smiles, nothing but a placid mask as he leans on the wall beside the door– innocence personified.

“Gen?” Senkuu tries shaking off the incessant voice in his head counting down the seconds he’s not writing. The seconds wasted not protecting their legacy. Tries shaking off the itching in his hands, his fingers. “What can I do for you?”

The smile stretches until it resembles a grimace as he lifts a hand holding Senkuu’s journals –humanity’s last hope, its legacy– in his hand. “Care to explain what this is?”

Senkuu sighs.

"So that’s what this is about, huh?" He muses to himself, squaring his shoulders for another confrontation. He grins, and extends his arms. "So? You're also gonna yell at me, for wanting to leave a legacy? I'm not planning on dying anytime soon, I must add."

Gen sighs, and flips his hair out of his face, the carefree air nothing but a façade. "You better not. If you're gone, who's going to make my favorite cola? And why would I even yell at you? Although maybe I should anyway, your syntax is troubling. Aren't you a genius? You write like a five-year-old kid."

Senkuu arches an eyebrow, feeling his heart on his throat because he’s not sure what Gen’s playing at. "I would like to see you do any better. I have a lot of things to put down in paper. I can't exactly stop every five words to make sure I'm coherent."

Gen stares at him some more, smile long since gone. "I'll help you."

Not entirely sold, Senkuu grins. "My, is the great Mentalist offering me his services for free? To what do I owe this charitable act?”

Gen doesn’t reply with a grin of his own, which only manages to put Senkuu on edge. He just looks down at the wad of paper in his hands, clumsily bound together with string with a forlorn expression. “You alone are humanity’s last hope, Senku-chan. But you don’t have to carry the weight of its legacy on your own.”

Senkuu’s hands open and close nervously by his side, as if he wanted to rip the pages away from the other man. A bead of sweat rolls down the side of his face. His voice carries a little too much bite than even he had intended. “What, you're giving me permission to die, then?"

"Of course not." Gen says as he stands up straight and goes into his hut without waiting for him. Senkuu is quick to follow, with jerky movements and frantic eyes. Gen doesn’t stop until he reaches the paper-laden desk, setting the Science journal down. "Even after we finish writing this, you are not allowed to die."

"Is that so?" Senkuu says, walking up to him, towering over the sitting mentalist as he procures a fresh page and a pen. "How do you plan on stopping me?"

Gen doesn't look back, too focused on writing "Outline" at the top. Then begins writing Senkuu’s full name. "I would like to think that our presence is enough of a reason for you to stay. And you can't exactly create a legacy if all you know dies with you, now can it?"

Senkuu is quiet as he reaches out a hand to Gen's to stop him. He bends down to press his forehead against Gen's hair.

His hand is shaking. They both are.

"This is humanity's legacy. It doesn't exactly need my name on it." He gulps. "But thanks."

"It's also yours, you know. Humanity would be lost without you."

Senkuu snorts. “It might go slower, but history tells us that humanity will always move forward.” Even if I am not in it.

The words are not spoken, but they linger in the air between them. Heavy, suffocating, _hopeless_.

Gen has a lot of things he would like to tell him, has a dozen different statements on the tip of his tongue. But he can _feel_ Senkuu’s mind whirling a mile a minute behind him, and he decides to wait and hear.

Senkuu gives off various false starts, but in the end he mumbles." I am… scared. Of- of failing. Of dying. Of taking humanity’s potential with me, but also…”

He gulps, falters. Gen bows his head.

“Why am I not surprised that it’s not death you fear the most?”

Senkuu laughs. He always laughs in the face of fear. He laughs when he should be crying. “What can death do to me besides kill me?”

“That’s plenty bad.” Gen says, but it’s half-hearted at best. Because it’s obvious, isn’t it?

Alone in the darkening room, surrounded by desperate attempts, of tears of inks, of cries on torn paper. Trembling against him, vulnerable and scared.

“Nobody likes being forgotten, Senku-chan.” Gen whispers softly. “You’re not weird for fearing this. You are not a coward.”

He laughs, once, short. An automatic response.

“Will you remember me, then? Will you remember me when I'm gone? Will you tell the world who I was, behind the knowledge?"

"Of course." Gen assures him, even as flimsy as it is. Even if mere words cannot hope to salvage the void of the unknown. "But I rather doubt I will outlive you, so. Let's also write down your legacy, eh? Tell your story to the world, Senkuu. I'll help you write it down, I'll help you pass it along... But I'll need proof."

"Proof, huh?" Senkuu mumbles lowly, as he hunches his back in order to mold against Gen, moving his head so his lips would be able to kiss his neck, his jaw. He waits for Gen to turn around in his seat, and then their lips are meeting. Again, and again.

It’s the first time they’re kissing, but there’s no fumbling, no awkwardness. He’s shaking, he’s cold, neither knowing who is who.

Teeth scratch lips, flesh– as if trying to leave a mark on their very souls. The kiss is long, and desperate, an _I’m scared,_ and _I’m here._

They part for breath, and Gen isn’t sure whose tears stain his cheeks. He cradles Senkuu’s face with a soft hand, smiling at him, knowing that there’s nothing they can do in the face of the unknown, yet daring to brave it together.

"I'll also give it to you," Gen whispers, in their shared breath. "I'll give you proof we're alive.

“Proof that you’re not alone.”

What is a legacy?

But the ardent wish of mankind of never being forgotten in the abyss of time?

**Author's Note:**

> ...  
Lay it on me, what are your thoughts?


End file.
